


Snippets of a Thread

by deskclutter



Category: The Sandman
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-22
Updated: 2010-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-10 05:41:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deskclutter/pseuds/deskclutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scissors and tapestries and lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snippets of a Thread

**Title:** Snippets of a Thread  
**Day/Theme:** February 14 / three aspects of one whole   
**Series:** Sandman  
**Character/Pairing:** Fates, Furies, whatever you call them  
**Rating:** G  
The knitting needles by the hearth have slowed their frenetic dance of silver by the firelight, for these women know when the time has come to exit with a graceful bow; their part is ended, and it remains only to watch the thread to its end, then snip it. They are the Graces, after all, and it is not done to overstay or to devote too little time to a life. So they were reminded when the man came out of captivity and named them such; they had forgotten, almost though not quite, how much lies within a name.

Threes come in cycles -- beginning, middling, ending -- and it is the ending they are concerned with now, as they were before, when they put on the thirsty visage of the Furies who are not unweak to a mother's plea, nor to tears when a master musician plays. It vexed, at the time, and their memory is long, and thus with a powerful thirst they set forth seeking blood. Liquid for liquid and father for son, as the son was already taken by the father himself. Cycles and cycles close in on themselves, spiralling to a new beginning.

But that is not the pattern here. This thread has been chronicled in parts in many places, but it is for the three-in-one and one-in-three to see the full history of it and not just the snippets of sections of it. To snip a thread before its end and tell only that, it is not done, say the Graces. It is the Graces that say to leave be, while the Furies rage for their revenge. It is a long and lasting thread, this is, and both good and bad have been chronicled here. The three may long to revenge and to give chance, but in the end, they are the Fates, and it is with dispassion that the scissors snip the thread -- not a fibre early, and not a fibre late.


End file.
